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The goal of a campaign setting is to provide a location that’s not only conducive for running a game, but actively helps to stimulate the creative process involved in doing so. One of the primary ways of doing that is by providing a world with developed verisimilitude; the more “realistic” the world feels – “realistic” here meaning that is has internal logic and consistency – the more alive it seems, and the easier it is to role-play in.
Given that, if we judge campaign settings by how alive they seem, then there are none better than Amethyst: Renaissance. That’s a lofty claim to make, but this massive campaign book backs it up solidly and then some. I reviewed the original 3.5 version of this setting, and said that it was a world brimming with possibilities even as it felt like the surface was barely scratched in the main book, and that’s still true with its Pathfinder incarnation. Let’s take a closer look.
The download consists of several files, five being gorgeous full-color pictures, four being equally pretty wallpapers, and the last one being the PDF of the book itself. I did frown slightly to find that there were no options for a printer-friendly version, nor any special files for things like Macs or e-readers. Of course, the former may be a bit of a pipe dream for a 399-page folio, but still, it would have been nice.
In terms of the book’s technical presentation, it mostly does okay. Copy-and-paste is fully enabled, which is as it should be, and bookmarks are present...but aren’t nested. This means that the bookmarks are all in a single, unbroken column that makes it somewhat hard to distinguish one from the other; if the chapter titles weren’t in lowercase letters where everything else was in capitals, they’d be easily lost amidst the clutter.
Of course, the book itself has many virtues to offset these minor flaws. For one thing, it is resplendent with artwork. I cannot overstate the quality of the interior art in Amethyst: Renaissance – the book has a grand total of three artists and between them, they’ve produced what might possibly the single best-illustrated book ever made for Pathfinder. The fact that almost all of the pictures are in black and white does nothing to detract from the quality of what’s here. Even if you’re not interested in the setting (and you should be) you’ll be captivated by the pictures.
Of course, the setting is pretty captivating itself. In a nutshell, the world of Amethyst is planet Earth set five hundred years in the future, after the cataclysmic return of magic. If that doesn’t sound too original, rest assured that there’s more – the nature of magic, for example, is divided in this setting. Whereas most campaign worlds put arcane magic as being just sort of “there,” magic in Amethyst has definitive sources.
For most creatures, the source of magic is Attricana, the White Gate, faintly visible as a bright star in the sky. This is the original source of magic, that produced dragons and fae races long ago before it was originally sealed away by the titular Amethyst himself; the first dragon. He did so because of the coming of Ixindar, the Black Gate, which is present on the Earth itself. Amethyst’s sacrifice sealed not only Attricana but also Ixindar, along with the mysterious intelligence that resides beyond the Black Gate, Mengus, and ended the age of magic, all long before the rise of humans. Now, with a second meteor strike reopening Ixindar, and for unknown reasons Attricana, five hundred years ago, magic and the creatures born of it are back.
The tone of Attricana and Ixindar cannot be overstated in the setting. Interestingly, while the White Gate is the source of magic that most are familiar with, it’s presented as a source of chaos as well as magical life – life itself is a chaotic thing, and Attricana encourages its growth and mutation without restraint, breaking down technology as a side effect. By contrast, Ixindar is a force of law as well as evil. It corrupts even as it encourages order, sublimating everything to its own design…and it doesn’t corrupt technology, either.
Speaking of which, the technological aspects of the setting are too large to be ignored, and indeed add the most readily-apparent manner in which this setting is different from most fantasy-medieval worlds. While most civilizations now are “echan,” or magic-touched, and many humans live among them, there are plenty of humans who live in mega-city-like bastions. Here technology barricades itself against magic, and life progresses much like it did before the return of magic; indeed, in many the level of technology has improved beyond what was available at the end of the twentieth century.
Ahem…but I’ll stop rambling here, and try to get hold of my enthusiasm long enough to give a more coherent review of the book.
The book’s first chapter acts as a much-needed overview of the setting. It talks about things like the history, common terms, and the overall feel of the campaign. It’s worth noting that the book is very upfront about what it doesn’t have being just as important as what it does. High-level spellcasting is exceptionally difficult, there are no other planes of existence (ethereal notwithstanding), and many monsters simply aren’t to be found. While you can certainly cherry-pick a lot of what’s here, Amethyst is a setting that is upfront about setting its own style.
The second chapter covers the nature of the fae races, with humans mentioned almost as an afterthought. None of the standard fantasy races, such as elves, dwarves, etc. are present here…except they are. Sort of. Each race has its own unique name, such as the damaskans, the laudenians, the gimfen, and many more…but more than a few of them strongly resemble standard fantasy races. That’s not an accusation of unoriginality either – rather, the setting plays up that these creatures resemble the fairy tales that humans told each other for centuries, but at the same time are worlds apart in terms of society and culture.
It’s that culture that’s given a heavy prominence in this chapter, though the racial stats are not glossed over for it. Things like cultural practices, social habits, and traditions are emphasized rather than being ignored, and it’s a big part of the reason why this campaign world feels so holistic. Despite how beautiful damaskans may look, for instance, they have very little sex drive, since they’re being of magic for whom procreation is much less of an issue. Amethyst: Renaissance knows that the little things are what make a setting stand out.
The third chapter covers different organizations in the game world, each receiving roughly a few paragraphs’ worth of description, along with the game stats of their prerequisites and the benefits of belonging to them.
The fourth chapter covers traits, as defined in the Pathfinder APG, and there are quite a lot of them here. Moreover, these aren’t tossed out quickly and with little context – these all receive paragraphs of descriptive text regarding what these traits actually mean for someone who has them. Several are more powerful than normal traits and count for both trait choices (though I wonder if that makes them essentially feats).
The fourth chapter is also where I do have one gripe – the lack of a reference table. If you prefer to have a handy table to quickly reference what traits are available, along with their prerequisites and benefits, you’re going to be disappointed here – and make no mistake, there are enough here that the absence of such a table is keenly felt. The feats chapter got such a table, and the lack of one here is an oversight.
The fourth chapter discusses classes. Perhaps surprisingly, there’s very little attention paid to the basic classes from the Pathfinder Core Rules; the big ones are a few classes being disallowed (mostly so they can be reintroduced later as prestige classes) and some changes to spellcasting classes – clerics, for example, don’t use verbal components for their spells, whereas wizards use no somatic components.
The major thrust of this chapter are the techan classes; those that rely exclusively on technology. This is no minor restriction, these guys can’t even receive the benefits of magic without it having serious consequences, namely in that doing so causes “saturation” which if driven high enough causes technological disruption.
That’s all explained later though, for now we have eight new tech-focused classes. From the heavy grounder (using super-heavy weapons – think rocket launchers and particle beams) to the medic (who has various medical treatments that are written similar to spells, though they’re entirely non-magical) to the sniper, these are the guys who venture out beyond the bastions into a hostile world and utterly demolish it with superior firepower. Interestingly, the classes are all d20 Hit Dice with fill BAB, or d8 Hit Dice with full BAB-minus-one. What does the latter mean? It means they start with a BAB of 0 and end with a BAB of 19. An interesting choice, if an odd one, but it doesn’t detract from the overall appeal of the classes.
The fifth chapter is devoted to skills and feats. There are only three completely new skills here (“completely new” discounting things like Knowledge (science)), being Demolitions, Engineer, and Vehicle Operation. Perhaps surprisingly, this last one is by far the most complicated, and doesn’t even cover everything regarding operating a vehicle (there’s more in the equipment chapter when you come to the vehicles themselves). I strongly recommend that everyone who wants to use a vehicle read both sections thoroughly, as they’re fairly rules-intensive.
As for the feats…I know I said the traits were numerous, but the feats are beyond expansive. The reference table takes over seven pages just to list them all. Racial feats, trait feats (feats that have a particular trait as a prerequisite), general feats, techan feats (most of which enhance using high-tech weaponry), vehicle feats, and more are here. I didn’t even try counting the sheer number of feats found here, but it’s far more than you could ever see if you had a full party going from levels one to twenty.
The sixth chapter covers equipment, and as with the chapter on classes, it’s a playground for the techans. Super-heavy guns, powered armor, vehicles that make Batman’s look like they had training wheels in comparison…there’s a plethora of toys here for those who embrace the science-fiction aspect of the setting. It’s not all weapons, armor, and vehicles either. From the currency to particular vehicle modifications to explosives to injections (e.g. drugs, nano-machines, etc.), as well as how magic disrupts these are all covered here.
Chapter seven covers prestige classes, of which there are slightly more than a dozen for the echan and techan each. Surprisingly, there’s little in-character development for what it means to have these classes. While some (such as paladin or ranger) are self-evidence from what we’re bringing to the game, there’s less intuitive understanding regarding the nature of a Selkirk brawler or an Ur-mage.
Chapter eight deals with magic, and I have to say that this is an area where I was grateful for the depth regarding the nature of magic as it exists in-character. All too often books with a magic chapter devote them solely to pumping out new spells, magic items, and similar material, and while you’ll find that here it helps a lot that the chapter opens with a discussion of where magic comes from and why it functions the way it does. For example, the language of magic, Pleroma, is discussed, as is the manner in which magic saturation disrupts technology (for Attricana), the corruption of Ixindar, and how to use high-level magic (otherwise known as “foundation spells”). Chapter nine ostensibly discusses magic items, but spends most of its time talking about the artifacts that are specific to the setting – again, this is far more of a function of what they mean in the world rather than what they do.
It’s on that note that we come to chapter ten, which is all about the setting. This is distinct from chapter eleven, because whereas that chapter acts as a guide to Canam (the new name for North America – the book never expands beyond that continent, though mentions are made of regions beyond it), chapter ten is devoted to aspects of the setting, such as languages and religions. The book’s twelfth and final chapter covers new monsters, including lists of monsters that are in the “canon” setting, those that aren’t but can be used without breaking the feel of the world, and those that are “banned” in the setting.
I also haven’t mentioned that there’s a story that progresses throughout the book, mostly at the ends of various chapters; the last fifteen pages or so of the book are devoted to ending the story, though it ends on a cliffhanger that makes it seem more like the end of a large prologue. Hopefully we’ll get more of it in further supplements.
By this point, my thoughts on Amethyst: Renaissance should be abundantly clear, but it bears repeating – this campaign world is breathtaking in its scope. There’s so much here, so artfully presented and with a tone that’s so holistic that it seems to leap off the page. A full campaign could easily be run from levels one to twenty without using half of what’s here; that’s how much material is found within these pages. It’s almost intimidating how high the bar is set; a sort of implication that says “for real role-players only!” but if that’s the case it backs it up.
The bottom line is that Amethyst sets a standard for campaign settings, one that won’t soon be matched. If you want a true renaissance for your Pathfinder game, look no further: it’s Amethyst.
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Lust is one of those aspects of the Pathfinder RPG that tend to get glossed over. It can’t be helped – in a game whose mechanics reward killing things and taking there stuff, it’s hard for the game rules to incentivize the PCs’ desire to have sex. The next best thing is to make enemies that are physically attractive and have lust-themed powers – the ubiquitous succubus comes to mind. Still, such creatures are comparatively few in number.
The fourth book in Open Design’s Monsters of Sin series, Monsters of Sin: Lust expands the roster of lust-based monsters, albeit only slightly.
The book gets most of the technical aspects of a PDF RPG supplement right. It has no bookmarks, which it really should, but copy-and-paste is enabled. There’s no printer-friendly version, or for that matter any sort of format for other types or easy-reading (e.g. tablets, Macs, etc.), but again its brevity helps to make that be less of an issue.
The artwork, it must be said, is of a high quality. Cory Trego-Erdner’s cover of the succubi stripping a hapless young man is vivid both in terms of its quality and of how expressly it connotes what’s happening. Likewise, Aaron Riley’s black and white interior artwork quite literally paints a start contrast, showcasing the monsters with striking depth.
Eleven pages long, with seven devoted to the eponymous monsters, Monsters of Lust contains a grand total of five monsters. The first isn’t really a monster per se, but rather is the lust slave template. Even calling this a template is hard, as it adds only a single new ability (annoyingly lacking in an ability tag – presumably it’s extraordinary) which has the lust slave creature gaining a bonus if the object of their adoration is in sight, but is confused if not. I personally thought that a confusion effect was the wrong mechanic to use here, but should have been some sort of penalty from their depression at being separated from their beloved. Ah well.
The first fully-fledged monster is the inbred orc, which needs no real introduction as to where these particular variants come from. Racial information is given for these hillbilly orcs, which are perhaps not surprisingly different from their normal counterparts – chief among them being two tables of mutations – one fortunate and one unfortunate. An NPC stat block helps to round things out.
Personally, I thought that this particular monster was good, but would have worked better as a template. Orcs aren’t the only humanoid creature that seems lacking in civilization enough to start inbreeding and suffer the effects thereof. It’s not too hard to take inspiration from this monster and use it as a baseline for varying other creatures in a similar manner, but this would have been easier as a template.
The lovelorn, a CR 11 creature, is a sort of ghost that died after being betrayed by a cruel lover or was simply so unlucky in love that they died heartbroken. Interestingly, there are shades of the banshee here, as they have a moan-based attack (though nowhere near as deadly, thank goodness!), and it’s likewise fitting that they deal Charisma damage. The lovelorn falls into a narrow gap of being different enough from similar incorporeal undead as to be distinct unto itself, but not so unique that your players will easily figure out what to do about it – there’s a lot of fun to be had here by a cruel GM.
For me though, the most interesting monster in the book was hands-down the truffle. A weak (CR 3) fey creature, the truffle looks like a small naked human child…making it clearly obvious that it has no sexual characteristics whatsoever. Not malevolent, truffles understand nothing about sex or gender identity, and so are intensely curious about creatures that have these characteristics when they meet them. This can quickly become awkward and even dangerous, however, when they start exercising their natural abilities to forcibly manipulate other people’s bodies, making people take their clothes off and demonstrate their sexuality to sate the truffle’s curiosity. Normally I frown on monsters with no original powers, but the role-playing potential – demonstrated excellently in the monster’s write-up – is incredibly strong here. This is a monster that should only be used with groups that can handle mature subjects in the game, but it’s likely to be quite worthwhile to do so.
The final creature in the book is the embodiment of lust itself. I wasn’t sure what to expect here, and was somewhat surprised by the creature’s description – that of a ten-foot tall creature with a vaguely feminine figure, but it entirely translucent, like a statue made out of glass. Of course, just being around the embodiment is exceptionally dangerous, as its Challenge Rating of 21 demonstrates. Just being around it can make you its lust slave, stripping naked as you approach it, and making you willing to do whatever it asks. I do wish there’d been more about the embodiment as an individual – it says that it has its thralls do its bidding, but there’s little explanation about just what that is. Presumably this creature has no particular agenda or goals beyond corrupting mortals into the sin of lust, but even this simple desire isn’t made entirely clear.
A few sidebars are peppered throughout the book. One talks about using sex in your campaign, but can basically be summarized as “don’t make people uncomfortable” – it’s the ubiquitous disclaimer that’s part and parcel of talking about sex in your game. Likewise, the issue of lust in the Midgard campaign is one paragraph about the lust and death goddess Marena, and two about how one man seduced several merchant’s daughters as a means of starting a war, allowing him to pick up power in the aftermath. Interesting to be sure, but so brief as to be little more than anecdotal.
My overall impression of the book is that while it’s probably stronger as part of the entire series (and certainly will be in the inevitable compilation volume), on its own it feels like it’s just starting to ramp things up when it suddenly comes to an end. The five monsters – really four and a very brief template – don’t seem like enough for the theme of the book. This isn’t to say that they’re not well-done, because they are; they’re simply not showcasing everything that could be done here. From the truffle showing us the unexpected ways that monsters can be developed around this theme to the embodiment of lust’s needing further expansion on what it wants to do to the inbred orc needing to be a full-fledged template, there’s more that could have been done here.
It’s primarily due to the book not living up to its potential that I’m giving it less than full marks. What’s here is worth four stars, but what’s not here would have been the fifth. Having said that, this book provides some fun new creatures for your game, dealing directly with the idea of lust without becoming tawdry. Pick up Monsters of Lust, and add a few new ways to scare your PCs with sex.
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One of the hardest things about playing a tabletop RPG is simply finding people to gather around the table. Coordinating schedules so everyone has enough free time at the same time can be exceptionally difficult. Given that, it’s surprising that more companies don’t put out adventures that can be used with only GM and a few players…or even one GM and just one player.
One such adventure is Lunatic Labyrinth, from Phoenix Rising Games.
It should be mentioned that Lunatic Labyrinth is billed as a game that can be played not only for one-on-one play, but also for solo play – that is, one person who acts as both player and GM. This claim is technically true, but there’s something of a “but…” in there. Which we’ll talk about more below.
One other thing should be made clear from the outset; at the time of this writing, I haven’t seen the Pathfinder Beginner Box, but from what I hear it’s got some sort of streamlined or specialized rules for easier play; based on what I’ve seen Lunatic Labyrinth doesn’t use anything in particular from the Beginner Box – this is straight Pathfinder.
The file comes as a single twelve-page PDF. I was surprised at the brevity of the adventure, but found that it managed to pack quite a bit into its twelve pages; between the adventure itself, the discussion of supplementary materials, and the labyrinth tiles, the book really feels packed.
From a technical standpoint, the book does fairly well. Full nested bookmarks are present, for which I give the author extra props, as I can imagine plenty of people overlooking those in a product this short, and copy-and-paste is likewise enabled. The artwork exemplifies the phrase “simple is best,” as it consists solely of black and white interior images (notwithstanding the labyrinth tiles, which are in color). This isn’t bad, and actually fits fairly well with the “no-frills” look of the book.
The adventure itself is refreshingly straightforward; you’re an adventurer looking to make a name for him- or herself, and to do this you’ve come to Lunatic Labyrinth, the abandoned lair of a cabal of warlocks, to claim the magic sword that lies within…you know it does, since the opening text says you’ve seen it in a fortune-teller’s crystal ball. I wouldn’t mention that last part, as it’s a fairly small bit of the opening read-aloud text, but it irked me a tiny bit, simply because it’s a throwaway line that just seems like it’s begging to become problematic if the adventure turns into a campaign (“before we go storm the vampire lord’s manor, let’s visit that fortune-teller I saw before I raided Lunatic Labyrinth; her crystal ball worked then, it should work now!”).
The adventure is easily set in any world, but does have a specific setting that it’s set in. This is very loosely described, having only a single half-page map of the region and quick glossary of locales. More is available on the Phoenix Rising Games website…something that the product tells you over and over. I’ll confess that I was slightly off-put at just how often the product hawked visiting the website; maybe it was right to do so, but it felt like it was stressed a little too strongly.
The labyrinth itself is based around a series of tiles, set randomly into a 5x5 grid (the entrance and exit aren’t random, however, always being in opposite corners). Each tile shows a hallway in some configuration, such as straight, a four-way intersection, a corner, etc. A smattering of monsters are also spread throughout the dungeon, looking to put an end to your hero.
Actually advancing through the dungeon is a bit tricky. The text on the tiles says something to the effect of keeping the tiles hidden from the player, but that seems counter-intuitive, so that’s a bit of a mark against it for being unclear. As it is, the text says not to try and make the hallways on each tile match up; rather the PC and the monsters both make a check (which is not the best idea, since it uses a skill most PCs won’t have…certainly the monsters don’t) to rotate a tile. The monsters, of course, are doing this to get at the hero (though how many of them move is random, and they move the same way as the hero), while the hero is presumably trying to get to the exit.
The adventure is written for a single character or 1st or maybe 2nd level. In this regard it’s spot-on, as the few monsters in the dungeon are fairly weak creatures…but then again, you’re an extremely low-level character all on your own. The monsters are represented by tokens for the labyrinth, and determining which is which requires a random roll; each monster has their own bit of flavor text and tactics laid out.
Once you reach the exit, you come to the final room and face the dungeon’s boss monster to claim the treasure and hear the game’s epilogue. Of course, the boss is no easy monster, especially as you may have fought all of the dungeon denizens to get there. Insightfully, the book takes this into account as it says that if you’re not a fighting-based character (e.g. a wizard), you’re also taking a 1st-level human fighter “guide” with you as well (I did like that he’ll abandon you if he’s hurt badly enough unless you can convince him not to, a nice old-school nod to how NPC henchmen aren’t fanatically loyal). Make sure to double-check his stat block though, as it’s missing some information (CMB and CMD for example) while others are incorrect (e.g. his saving throws).
By now, the question of how the game is meant to be “solo-playable” should be obvious; this idea largely rests around the idea that the monster tokens on the labyrinth tiles use a combination of randomized (for how many move) and pre-set sequences (for where they move) to determine whether or not they encounter the hero. This part did seems somewhat entertaining, but only from a simple standpoint – it was more of a quick mini-game than a true solo adventure.
The rest of the adventure is a more traditional set of Pathfinder encounters; you could conceivably run these as a “solo” also, but only in the way that you could play chess as a solo affair, moving one side and then the other. That’s pretty lacking in terms of excitement, since everything short of the die rolls is entirely under your purview, and you can fudge those.
As a one-on-one adventure, I’d recommend removing the mechanics relating to how the monsters move and instead treat them as you would monsters in a normal game. Beyond that, it’s actually a very fun little adventure, offering almost but not quite enough to get a first-level character to second level, if they defeat every monster (on the medium XP progression), and hitting that sweet spot where it’s simple enough not to feel like a burden, but presenting just enough of a wider world to seem tantalizing – while it may need a bit of polishing to make it shine, I’d definitely run this as an introductory adventure for someone new to the hobby. You don’t have to be crazy to see the excitement that Lunatic Labyrinth offers.
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I’ll be blunt: I’m very dubious of the idea of feats that only modify specific spells (or extremely small groups of spells). The idea that you’re ever going to be using that particular spell just that much that you can afford to spend a precious feat slot in it is, to me, a stretch. Having said that, if anyone can pull it off, it’s the Super Geniuses, so let’s take a look.
Part of their #1 With a Bullet Point series, 4 Feats for Spells that Raise the Dead is fairly self-explanatory in what it offers. Notwithstanding the ubiquitous series intro (explaining the idea of buying a short product with no “frills”) and the OGL, what you have here is one page with four feats on it, designed to modify the roughly half-dozen spells that bring the dead back to life.
While I don’t want to go too deeply into what these feats do (why would you buy the product otherwise), there’s one that allows you to “swap out” spells for resurrection-type spells, one that allows the resurrected creature to come back with the answer to a specific question, one that allows the creature to “rewrite” some of its basic information (e.g. stats, age, etc.), and one that allows you to take on the negative level of a resurrected creature.
Overall, I’m not sure if I’m entirely convinced that these feats are worthwhile. The Super Geniuses clearly understand that when the versatility of a feat is so tightly restricted, its power needs to be greater; I’m just not sure that these necessarily live up to that. For example, a feat that lets you “swap out” for resurrection type spells seems like overkill…will you ever really need just THAT many resurrection spells in a single day? If you need one immediately, but don’t want to prepare one, why not just go for a scroll? It doesn’t seem like quite enough. Similarly, coming back to life with the equivalent of a commune spell seems like a flat-out waste of a feat; just cast commune!
Having said that, the other two feats do, to my mind, live up (resurrection pun!) to their potential. Being able to rewrite a resurrected character, at least to some degree, is the best of both worlds between getting to play your old character again and playing a new one. Similarly, being able to avoid a negative level is good, particularly if the other person is willing to take that particular hit for you.
Overall, while none of these feats are anywhere near being bad, to me only two out of four were truly worthwhile. Your mileage may vary, of course, but to me this has two winners and two near-misses. So a solid three out of five stars.
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It’s universally understood, though not often said, that evil is simply cooler than good. Evil people are the ones who get to dress in the most arresting outfits, make the grandest speeches, and perform the most memorable actions. Simply put, evil characters make a bigger impression than their righteous counterparts…though oftentimes the good guys can come close.
In Way of the Wicked Book Four: Of Dragons and Princesses, players and GMs get to see this truism up close and personal. Heck, it’s even in the book’s title – this is adventure is all about those most fearsome of beasts, dragons, as well as women of nobility and power. While the PCs have met some truly arresting characters so far, it’s here that they begin to truly begin interacting with the kingdom’s power-players on a regular basis.
But before we get any further into the meat of the adventure, let’s look at the technical aspects first. The fourth Way of the Wicked book comes as three PDFs. The first is the main adventure itself, while the second is a printer-friendly version thereof. The last one is labeled as being “player handouts,” which is a slight misnomer; rather, it’s a single player handout, and four maps of major areas that have all of the labels removed, making things easier for the GM (though some might grimace at the fact that the name of the place depicted is still featured on each map).
The main file, one hundred-six pages in length, presents itself fairly well on a technical scale. Copy and pasting are enabled, and the text is fully searchable. Bookmarks are present, but again there’s only one bookmark for each major section of the book; if you want to find a more specific sub-section, you’ll need to scroll to it manually. Both of these are also true for the printer-friendly PDF.
Unfortunately, the printer-friendly PDF only lives up to its designation half-heartedly. Its idea of being “printer-friendly” is to remove the background coloration from the pages, and set the page borders to being grayscale lines. All of the interior illustrations and maps are still there in lavish full-color.
Having said that, the main file is notably resplendent. The pages are set on a dark tan background (which, I think, is meant to look like parchment) with ornate black borders on three sides. Full-color maps are present for each major section, and of course the interior illustrations are all in lustrous full color as well. I must once again tip my hat to artist Michael Clarke, as the various pictures of the major characters that the PCs meet are, to be blunt, arresting. Each one of these pictures clearly conveys the thousand words that they’re worth.
My last technical critique is regarding what’s not here, rather than what is. There are no files that are optimized for e-readers or Macs. While this wasn’t a big deal to me personally, I suspect that it’s a bit more of a nuisance for those who want versions of the book optimized for those devices.
Now, let’s get down to the adventure itself. As with previous installments, this one actually begins almost exactly where the previous one ended – I’m of two minds about how the book actually opens with what feels like the epilogue to its predecessor; on the one hand, it feels almost anticlimactic, as instead of moving forward with the plot you’re dealing with the loose ends from your last adventure. On the other hand, this helps to lend a much greater sense of cohesiveness to the campaign as a whole, since the adventures feel much more interconnected…something I suspect was author Gary McBride’s intent.
Regardless, the adventure opens with the PCs in what’s left of the Vale of Valtaerna, having not only snuffed out the holy flames of the state religion’s most holy site, but also slaughtered every living thing in the valley. Or at least, that was the plan. If the PCs succeeded, then they get to march their army out (absorbing the surviving bugbears into their own evil organization, if the rules from Book Two are being used) with no fuss as they continue their evil plans.
Cogently, however, the book spends more time talking about what happens if the PCs failed and some survivors managed to escape. In this case, the winter thaw finds an army of light (FAR outnumbering the PCs’ forces) preparing to retake the Vale. This is another classical “villain moment,” in that it presents the PCs with the question of what they’ll do regarding their minions when it comes time to beat a hasty retreat. While the PCs can likely escape on their own, there are various actions presented, along with their consequences, should they also want to save their minions and greater retinue.
Once the PCs escape, it’s time for them to relax before their next assignment. Rejoining with the humanoid army led by Fire-Axe at the recently-conquered city of Daveryn, the PCs can kick back and accomplish some side-quests for a month. This is largely a chance to catch up on XP and treasure (in the form of some good old-fashioned looting), but does have several opportunities for the PCs to find several clues for their upcoming assignment.
Speaking of being assigned, after a month of squashing what resistance remains in Daveryn, the PCs’ master sends them one last assignment: to kill the king of Talingarde. Of course, this isn’t as simple as just poisoning his food – the king marches at the head of an army, and attacking him there is suicide. Rather, the PCs are to create a huge calamity back at his palace, where his young daughter resides. The king, loving his child so much, will magically transport back to defend her…which is when the PCs will ambush him.
Of course, this requires creating a disaster of sufficient magnitude, and it’s here that the titular dragons begin to come into play. The PCs need to enlist the help of the great black wyrm Chargammon. This is much easier said than done, as the dragon eats anyone who approaches him. So first, they need to find a way to secure an audience.
This part of the adventure seemed, to me, to be a bit rushed – not the issue of the PCs’ master giving them their next assignment (the book is actually very cognizant of the fact that the PCs are by now straining their metaphorical leashes) – but rather, how the PCs are supposed to think of the manner in which they’re to safely meet with Chargammon. Simply put, one of the aforementioned clues in sacking Daveryn is the key here, but the sandbox nature of the conquered city means it’s less than certain that the PCs will even look in the right place, let alone find it. The adventure basically tells the GM to make sure the PCs find this clue somehow, but only offers a few off-the-cuff suggestions for what to do if the PCs don’t go to the right area and look in the right place; it’s a weak point in what’s otherwise an excellent adventure.
Once the PCs discover the clue, it’s off to find the one person who can secure them a meeting with Chargammon. This is largely a sidetrek, as the adventure makes it fairly easy to locate the correct area once the PCs are on the right path, and the fight is relatively brief.
Only after this is done can the PCs meet with the powerful black dragon, being able to journey there in relative safety (I have to interject here that the picture of the black drakes that dwell on Chargammon’s island made me think of a certain dragon named Toothless). The actual meeting itself is anything but safe, however, as Chargammon is as arrogant as he is powerful. It’s very easy for PCs who are stupid or proud to provoke a fight that they likely cannot win. Again, this is an area where the plot moves along very thin rails; a minor disruption can have major repercussions here.
Chargammon, in the true style of RPG NPCs, won’t agree to do anything unless the PCs undertake a quest for him first. In this case, he wants a rival dragon slain – a copper dragon of less power but greater allies named Eiramanthus. This is no small thing, as like Chargammon, Eiramanthus commands his own island.
The island is an otherworldly place. Eiramanthus is a planeswalker extraordinaire, and alters his home to better reflect the nature of his travels. As such, the entire island has an alien feel to it that also gives it certain defensive properties. The major defenses are the creatures who dwell there, however – in addition to visitors and the local servants, Eiramanthus’s home is occupied not only by the dragon himself, but by his three concubines; exotic and powerful women that he wooed on his travels.
I was critical of some of the previous parts of the adventure because they had clear directions that they wanted the PCs to go, but offered only a relatively narrow range of options for how to make that happen. Here, the situation may seem somewhat similar, but I don’t hold this against the book. That is, if the PCs are stupid, they may end up facing Eiramanthus with most of his servants and concubines helping him, which is likely to overwhelm the PCs. It’s far smarter to use some degree of subterfuge to try and take them down one at a time or in small groups.
There’s little advice on what the situation is or how to make sure things don’t go south quickly. I don’t consider this a bug, but rather see it as a feature. This adventure is for high-level PCs, and at this point if they’re not using some degree of strategy, the fault is entirely their own. That the PCs are likely to face disaster if they try to kick in the door is how things are supposed to go. At this point, punishing them for not using their heads is the correct thing to do.
It’s after things are done here that the plot makes a significant leap, as it’s here that the PCs are given not only a great deal more information on their master’s past, but are given the first direct information regarding overthrowing him. The seeds for the next book are sown here…
Once Eiramanthus is slain (and his truly prodigious hoard, which includes some amusing souvenirs from other dimensions, has been claimed), Chargammon is willing to hold up his end of the bargain. Now all that’s left is to head to the capital city and prepare to lure the king into the death-trap. This is an area where the PCs will again have a chance to explore a major city, but that part is left to the gazetteer at the end of the book.
For the final act, the king’s palace is detailed. Sneaking in and overcoming the defenders isn’t what I’d call cakewalk, but it’s by no means a truly difficult affair, which makes sense as most of the martial forces have marched to the front. However, plenty of soldiers remain that even a high-level group should be wary of sounding an alarm before their ready to commit regicide. Once Chargammon attacks, however, the king (who is a paragon of a certain eight Virtues, for fans of a particular old school RPG series) comes running…along with his closest defenders. Remember, they came back because the situation was dire, so even caught unaware they’re still ready for a truly tough fight. To slay a king here will be no small thing for the PCs.
The adventure doesn’t quite end there, as there’s a “cut scene” involving Chargammon and the princess. I honestly wasn’t quite sure what to make of this, as this is written as a narrative, and so it’s difficult to know if this is meant to be read to the PCs or is simply an extra for the GM. Ideally the former, but that might not be workable. Far better, at least in terms of practicality, was the FAQ-style section where the book dealt with what to do if things went awry at various points. This was a very bright idea, as this adventure more than others offered places in which various parts of the plot could conceivably be done out of order, ignored, or changed depending on the PCs’ actions. The suggestions for how to get things back on track are most welcome.
Of course, the book doesn’t end here. A gazetteer is given for the capital city of Talingarde, Matharyn. While I was expecting to be tired of city guides, I was once again proven wrong. Matharyn has its own feeling; whereas other cities are populated by people pragmatic in their approach to life and work, Matharyn really is a bastion of order and goodness. This is a city where the people are good and do good, and the author notes that this is quite likely to throw less-selfish evil-doers for a loop; it’s hard to imagine a society more perfect than one where everyone works for the common good and is genuinely happy. Luckily for those characters who want to destroy such virtue, there are ten brief side-quests given as well.
The final section of the book is a discussion regarding how to run the campaign for PCs who become vampires or liches. If this sounds random, it shouldn’t, as the previous book presented the PCs with a golden opportunity to become vampires, and this one presents a similar method for achieving lichdom (I won’t spoil the surprise here). This is the first of a two-part section, with this first one eschewing mechanics (save for one new magic item that allows vampires to survive in sunlight) in favor of advice and suggestions.
It’s worth noting that this section is also fairly lopsided in favor of vampires. While the initial part does talk about some of the issues with playing a lich (e.g. can lich powers be voluntarily deactivated? What to do if someone steals your phylactery?), the majority of it talks about what to do regarding the many weaknesses and restrictions of vampires. This may seem like would-be lich PCs are being snubbed, but it’s understandable given that vampirism is much easier for most PCs to achieve, compared to lichdom. The section closes out with book-by-book advice given for running Way of the Wicked as a campaign about the ascendancy of a vampire kingdom.
Overall, there’s little question that Of Dragons and Princesses stands alongside the previous three adventures as a high-water mark among adventures. However, it never exceeds the standards its predecessors set. Small issues regarding how smoothly the plot continues onward, along with one too many “fetch quests” for my taste (e.g. quest to figure out how to meet Chargammon, quest to secure his aid, etc.) make this an adventure that’s excellent by any other standard, but not quite so much as the others.
Of course, those are small complaints compared to what’s here overall. From the flight from Valtaerna to the first real discussion of overthrowing the PCs master to the assassination of the king and so much more, there’s a huge amount of high-quality adventuring to be had here. Stamp out rebels, murder kings, and bring the world one step closer to damnation as you perform deeds Of Dragons and Princesses.
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New monster books are always fun, as they add more critters that you can throw at your PCs without worrying that they’ll have its abilities memorized. Weighed against that, however, is the question of whether these monsters – even when CR appropriate – will fall into that careful middle ground between “cakewalk” and “TPK-maker.”
The Mor Aldenn Creature Compendium seems to manage that balancing act, though it wobbles slightly along the way.
Thirty-five pages long and presenting twenty new monsters, the Mor Aldenn Creature Compendium presents itself fairly well. It allows for copy-and-paste, but has no bookmarks, something which was frown-worthy. The book comes as a single PDF, having no files for Mac-compatibility or e-readers.
The book’s artistic presentation eschews ostentation, having no page borders or fancy backgrounds, instead focusing solely on the artwork. In this, it does quite well, having a single black-and-white image for each creature it presents. This was very wisely done, as monster books virtually require each new creature to receive a visual depiction. It helps that the illustrators uniformly did a good job, presenting each monster with a grim seriousness that undergirds their presentation.
Like monster monster books, the majority of the monsters fall into the single-digit Challenge Ratings. While there are a fairly diverse range of creature types presented, from plants to fey to humanoids, there is an underlying theme to most of these monsters – a large number of them are based around a swamp/marsh environment. This isn’t coincidental; as the title suggests, the book’s writing is specific to the Mor Aldenn campaign setting, and the flavor text for the monsters often discusses them in the context of where they are found in the game world. As the Night Hag who dwells in a certain swamp appears to be a major antagonist, a large number of the monsters are based around that environment.
In regards to the monsters themselves, most seemed to be at least somewhat creative in their powers and abilities. The marsh dragon, for example, has several powers based around creating and controlling shambling mounds. The portune is a “classical” fairy that can be rebuked if you say its name (and can be an improved familiar). The most interesting monster in this regard is the manifest child of the ether, which has a number of powers based around its strange connections to magic and being from beyond known reality.
There were a few issues that came up with some monsters, however. A few had an armor class that was far too low for a creature of its CR. The arachnus, for example is a CR 11 creature with an AC of…16. No damage reduction, either. It’s the sort of monster that, due to that quite literally fatal flaw, won’t last long in melee combat. The hag spider has the same CR, and has AC 18. It’s little things like this that can undermine otherwise-great monsters. I’d recommend looking these creatures over with a critical eye before using them.
Having said that, these are creatures that should be used in your game. The level of innovation here is a cut above the norm, and this is reflected in the monsters descriptions and abilities. Even if you don’t play in Mor Aldenn, there are a lot of interesting creatures here that can help to liven up your game.
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Bad luck is part and parcel of RPGs, particularly dice-based ones like Pathfinder. Whether it’s your fiendishly-clever plan suddenly going belly-up, or rolling the dreaded natural 1, sometimes things just turn against you. But what if that wasn’t just an uncontrollable aspect of the game, but rather a character theme? What if your PC was somehow who had a measure of control over ill luck, and could actually use it to their advantage? What sort of character build is like that?
The answer is the Malefactor Base Class, from Total Party Kill Games.
Right off the bat, I have to give TPK Games credit for their files – not only does the PDF come with a printer-friendly version (though said version lacked PDF bookmarks, but that’s a minor nitpick), but it also came with two Hero Lab files; one for the class itself, and another for the sample NPC made with it. A helpful readme text file on how to install the Hero Lab files is a nice little extra. I was going to note little things that weren’t here like a mac-compatible or epublishing version, but that seems nitpicky in light of just how much is here already.
The main PDF is also to be commended for hitting the highlights of its format. Copy-and-paste is enabled, and full nested bookmarks are included. The artwork featured two full-page full-color interior pieces. The first is a clean version of the cover image, and is truly excellent – I can see why they used it as the basis for their sample character. The second image was of similar quality, but there was a slightly “blurred” look about it; not much, just slightly enough that I wasn’t sure if the picture was drawn that way, or if the resolution needed to be tightened up a little.
I had mixed feelings about the page backgrounds. Each page is set against a sort of slate-gray background, reminiscent of a tombstone. This included an ornate black border near the edge of each page. Ironically (or perhaps on purpose) this formed a sort of natural border for the text, but whenever the text got close enough that the black lettering hit the border, I felt like it was being obscured slightly. Certainly that didn’t happen too much, but enough to be worth mentioning.
The Malefactor Base Class opens with a short bit of fiction told from the perspective of the sample character, after which we’re taken to the class itself. The Malefactor is fairly strong, having medium BAB and the corresponding d8 Hit Dice, along with only one bad save (Fortitude). It’s also pretty good skill monkey, having a dozen class skills and 6 Int bonus skill points per level. I was also pleased to see that the TPK guys remembered to add in the malefactor’s level 1 starting gold.
In regards to the design of the class’s special abilities, I was pleasantly surprised at just how strong the design was. This manages to perfectly capture the innovation that a new class should have with the design philosophy of a Pathfinder base class.
The malefactor’s main abilities revolve around a pool of strife points, and its malediction powers. There are certainly more powers than these, of course, but these two help to form the core identity of the class. Maledictions are somewhat like a witch’s hex powers, in that the player selects one every so often as they level up, and can be used at will. Unlike witch hexes, which have a hierarchy of the normal ones, the stronger ones, and the strongest, all maledictions are equal. However, roughly midway through the malefactor’s progression, it gains the ability to spend strife points on its maledictions to increase their power. Each malediction has an expanded paragraph describing what it does when used in this manner.
Strife points have other uses, of course. So long as the malefactor has at least one, it’s protected from its own aura of unluck, which penalizes saving throws for everyone around it. It also has a great deal of curse-related powers (a helpful sidebar describes what game effects constitute a “curse” for this purpose), such as spending strife points to cause greater damage to those operating under a curse, detecting curses, being able to remove them or even ignore them, and quite a bit more. The class is incredibly versatile within its theme.
In regards to its flavor, the malefactor is based around the idea that some children, when they’re born, are the permanent host of chaos-spirits known as “yla” who attract bad luck to them. The malefactor has learned how to channel this bad luck into its powers. I was somewhat unimpressed with the flavor text, if only because it gave a fairly concrete flavor to a class that allowed for a greater range of in-game interpretations of how its powers worked. Having said that, I do have to give the writers props for keeping the flavor firmly married to the mechanics – it mentions how various powers, for example, are because of the yla’s spiritual attacks or influence.
That alone would have been enough, but in another move that shows that they know what Pathfinder players want, the book continues on with a set of expanded options for malefactors. We’re initially given five class archetypes, such as the moirae (who pronounce fate to make their allies succeed on tasks) or the kismet (who try and focus their powers on good luck, rather than bad).
I was slightly less impressed with the archetypes, as the fluff often felt thinnest here. Does a kismet still have an yla spirit, for example? Moreover, more than one of these archetypes just traded in a single class feature – I’m personally of the opinion that archetypes should always have at least two or more to be worthwhile, otherwise the difference between them and the normal class is, to me, too small. Worst, however, were the instances where the replacement power didn’t say what class feature that it was replacing (I’m looking at you, Curse-Eater archetype).
A short, surprising section on what you know about malefactors at various DCs leads us into a dozen malefactor-specific feats. While these did have the ubiquitous single line of flavor text before giving us their mechanics, most of these felt utilitarian in nature – you had the requisite feat for increasing a specific malediction’s save DC, or use one as a move action (rather than a standard), or gain further points of strife, etc. These were good, but felt obligatory.
Pleasantly, this wasn’t the case for malefactor favored class bonuses. A whopping fourteen races have entries here, including (naturally) a number of races from later monster/race books, such as the dhampir, drow, and fetchlings. Each has a short bit of flavor text describing how malefactor members of that race look at their powers. My only complaint here is that some entries note that their possibilities include a 1 skill point or 1 hit point, which goes without saying since those are the default favored class bonuses, and so didn’t need to be reiterated here.
There’s a short but insightful section on malefactors in your game (they make great debuffers) before we’re given the sample NPC from the cover. I wasn’t quite sure if I missed something when it noted that not only was she a demon-spawn tiefling, but that she was of the succubus bloodline – I know there are rules for tieflings from different kinds of evil outsiders, but I’m unaware of any sort of rules for making them be from a specific kind of monster (and since the character is a single-classed malefactor, the “bloodline” thing isn’t of the sorcerer ability of the same name).
The character stat block is fairly straightforward, but could have used some minor touch-ups (you don’t need to list an attack’s critical multiplier if it’s x2) and had a number of things set as hyperlinks to the d20PFSRD. What was fairly ugly, however, was after the stat block it listed out, in alphabetical order, expanded text on everything the character had. Literally everything; her class abilities, racial abilities, magic items, traits, etc. are all summarized there. It was more than a bit overwhelming, and certainly unnecessary. If something in her stat block is from a different book, a hyperlink (or at least a parenthetical note of which book) is sufficient.
Overall, these little flaws are easily ignored in favor of just how much is here. The malefactor base class is incredibly well-constructed both in terms of its theme and its mechanical execution. While there are a few places, mostly in the expanded material, where one or the other falls a little flat, as a whole this book offers an incredibly innovative new class for your Pathfinder game. It’s deserving of each and every one of its five stars. The malefactor may be a class that deals with bad luck, but you’ll feel anything but unlucky if you pick this up.
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I needn’t talk about the archetypal nature of magic rings in fantasy. From the Ring of Gyges to Green Lantern, magic rings that grant their wielder great power are timeless. This continues to be the case in Pathfinder, which allows for all sorts of magic rings. All too often, however, these are minor things easily forgotten about (e.g. a ring of swimming) or are so standard as to be assumed for treasure (e.g. rings of protection). The Ebon Vault: Power of the Ring, from Necromancers of the Northwest, seeks to shake things up a bit.
Power of the Ring weighs in at forty-seven pages, and does most of what a PDF should. It has full, nested bookmarks, for example. However, copy-and-paste has not been enabled, so if you’re looking to copy something onto an electronic character sheet, you’ll need to retype it by hand. The book has no printer-friendly option, which might be a bit of a problem for those looking for a hard copy; while the book’s only interior illustrations are stock art of various rings, all of the pages are set against a cream-colored “parchment” background.
The book opens with a bit of fiction, which was actually much more intriguing than I thought it would be. Showing the exchange between a thief and one of the book’s intelligent rings, the banter between the two (particularly the bombastic ring, which kept giving the thief cutesy pet names) was quite fun, enough so that I wouldn’t have minded reading more about their exploits.
The book quickly moves onto a more proper introduction before giving us twenty descriptions of ring appearances. These aren’t tied to any particular magic rings, and so can be used for whatever rings your characters happen to find. Each description is a paragraph long, and doesn’t want for details; indeed, there’s so much detail to each description that you may find it might not be quite right for the magic you’re attaching to it (e.g. a stylized carving of two serpents about to swallow a gemstone might be a bit off for a ring of jumping).
The bulk of the book is devoted to new magic rings a la those in the Core Rules. More than fifty are presented (though a few of these are variants on the same kind of ring, e.g. the ring of bowmanship and its lesser and greater variants; this sort of thing doesn’t happen often, though) and they run quite the gamut. Unlike in the Core Rules, these rings tend to have a wide range of costs, from just a few hundred GP to three hundred thousand!
In terms of effect, most of these rings avoid more prosaic effects, focusing instead on a broader set of powers not easily replicated by spells or feats. For every ring of flying (which grants a 5 to Fly checks) there are things like the ring of branding (dealing fire damage to put a magic brand on the target, which requires powerful magic to remove and once a day can let you teleport them to you) or the ring of infernal wishes (putting you in contact with a powerful devil, and the more wishes it grants you the more closely you tie yourself to the infernal ones) or the ring of the body (you no longer suffer from aging, poisons, or diseases…but they catch up to you when you remove the ring). There’s a lot here for GMs and players to be inspired by.
Several rings are segregated into separate sections near the end of the book. The Five Legendary Rings of Matthias the Mad, for example, showcase four (the fifth is in the following section) rings with a hefty back-story, as well as unique powers. The Intelligent Rings section likewise presents a half-dozen living rings that gives us not only their appearance and powers, but also their origins and personalities (including, I was glad to see, the ring from the opening fiction).
The book closes out with a table of one hundred magic command words. These don’t appear to be based on any real-world language, consisting of nonsense words that can be assigned as necessary. Needless to say, this is quite valuable for any sort of command-activated magic item, not just rings. Although only a page long, this table has usefulness beyond the product it’s found in.
Overall, I was quite taken with what this book offers. The rings it presents range from weak but versatile (the key ring, which can copy a small set of keys to instantly unlock their matching locks) to the supremely powerful (the ring of dragon command, which grants great powers and defenses against dragons, as well as dragon-themed abilities). There was the occasional typo (the bookmarks, for example, list that last one as the “ding of dragon command”), but these were too rare for me to take off points for that. I do wish that they had taken care of the copy-and-paste issues, and had a printer-friendly version, but again I find that these aren’t so bad that I can lower the book’s final score.
Were I able, I’d give this book four-and-a-half stars, mostly do to the minor technical complaints. I‘ll round up though, as these are all issues that won’t come up unless you want to try and manipulate the book’s format. If you want to expand the nature of the magic rings in your game, glance inside The Ebon Vault: Power of the Ring. What you find will be…precious.
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Soft kitty, warm kitty, little ball of fur…happy kitty, sleepy kitty, purr purr purr.
It’s easy sometimes to forget that the Tarnished Souk is set on the Plane of Dreams, as many of its characters have little to do with dreaming specifically. Smiles-Under-the-Bed, by contrast, has everything to do with being a creature of dreams, and exploits the nature of the Dream Plane in numerous ways…as she herself has been exploited.
Smiles’ opening does a surprisingly good job of describing her character in a single page. Not ironically, she comes across as exactly what she is – a fierce creature that has been hardened from an eternity of rejection. An exceptionally dangerous ambush predator, Smiles devours the dreams (and the physical forms) of those she preys upon, being a literal nightmare herself. However, she is also a dream-scarred creature, having lost almost all of her Hope (her dearest dream). Portrayed properly, Smiles-Under-the-Bed is the embodiment of a tragic villain.
Like all members of the Faces of the Tarnished Souk line, Smiles is an advanced creature with several templates stacked onto her, along with a mish-mash of other new materials. A tribute to the triumph of the Open Game License, Smiles weighs in at a heavy CR 19 with four different templates, along with two traits and a new magic item. Two additional stat blocks, showing Smiles at CRs 13 and 8, make her useful against lower-level parties.
The materials used to construct Smiles are given separately for your ease of use. The two traits (one of which is from Coliseum Morpheuon) showcase her nature as both a creature that has lost her Hope, and which gains strength from frightening others. Likewise, her new magic item allows her to make herself invisible in Cheshire cat-like ways. The four new templates round out the book.
Overall, I quite liked Smiles-Under-the-Bed, both for her tragic but villainous nature as well as how well she plays to the dreaming rules. Whereas most members of the Tarnished Souk can be fairly easy to use anywhere, Smiles may take a bit more effort to convert to a different location; it’s still easily done, but her emphasis on attacking dreams (both literal and metaphorical) could require some tweaking. She’s perfect for the Coliseum Morpheuon, however. This is a kitty with nine lives’ worth of torment to inflict.
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The raison d’etre of the Open Game License is to allow others to reuse that which a publisher declares Open Game Content; 99% of the time, this allows for various game mechanics to be shared. But what about sharing various non-mechanical aspects of game design? In that area, most publishers are highly conservative, apparently afraid that someone will take their characters and settings and make a twisted mockery of them. Every so often, however, you’ll find an RPG book that allows for something like its settings, characters, or even deities to be Open.
The Gods of Porphyra (aka The Open Faiths Project) is one of those books.
A forty-five page book featuring twenty-seven new deities and some associated new game crunch, Gods of Porphyra’s technical presentation makes a good showing of itself. Full nested bookmarks are present for every section and subsection and copy and paste is enabled. In regards to artwork, the book appears more spartan than it actually is, lacking in page borders. However, each god has an image on the center of the page of their holy symbol, and the two new monsters in the book each have a full-page, full-color image. This strikes a very nice balance between being overloaded with graphic design and being utterly utilitarian; other PDF publishers could learn from the presentation here.
The book opens with a brief note from the publisher and some information about the Porphyra setting. Interestingly, though perhaps not surprisingly, the Open Game nature of the setting takes the in-game stance of having the OGC materials come from other realities and dimensions. Hence how the gods here are all non-native deities that arrived to what was previously a godless world. Two new clerical domains, Art and Time, are presented, each having two new subdomains as well.
The book helpfully opens its main section on the new gods with a two-page chart, listing all of the deities and their pertinent information for at-a-glance reference. Each deity is given a single-page write-up, beginning with their “statistical” information in terms of their alignment, domains, favored weapon, etc. I do commend Purple Duck Games for remembering to give us subdomains here, though they did forget to include inquisitions (though to be fair, that’s an easy oversight to make). The majority of the one-page information presents us with the “Legend” section, which tells us of how that deity came to be, and the “Church” section, discussing how that god’s followers conduct themselves in terms of organization and activities.
Interestingly, each also has a paragraph dedicated to “Spell Preparation Ritual” which is the rite by which divine spellcasters of that god regain their spells each day. I enjoyed this section, since it’s little bits of flavor text like this that help to differentiate between clerics of various deities. There’s a mechanical flipside to this in that each deity also has two new religion traits presented, each specific to what it means to be a followers of that particular god.
I had somewhat mixed feelings about the presentation of the various deities. On the one hand, there were some story elements I disagreed with, as some of the legends about where these deities came from seemed off for how deities are usually portrayed in a game world. However, perhaps ironically, that actually makes the in-game mythological nature of these legends more “realistic” in terms of presentation – after all, to the residents of the campaign setting, there probably are no “rules” for how gods function.
Two new monsters are presented, being the creatures of a specific deity. The first is a template with an associated sample creature, while the second is a new monster unto itself. About a dozen spells, all of which are granted from the aforementioned new domains and subdomains, are the book’s final presentation. Some of these may seem familiar if you’re a wider reader of Pathfinder-compatible products, as they all seem to come from other third-party materials, though most likely the majority of them will seem new to you.
Overall, I quite liked what The Gods of Porphyra presents. Knowing the book’s Open nature gives it a feeling of utility, that the publisher is not only making these allowable for re-use, but is actively encouraging us to do so. That’s a feeling that I think should be more prevalent among OGL publishers, especially where setting-based elements of campaign worlds are concerned. Beyond that, the crunch is without any flaws that I saw, and the flavor text is good, though focusing on the Patchwork World of Porphyra more than I suspect most other publishers will want to carry over. Still, it’s good to see some deities presented under the OGL. With any luck, we’ll be seeing them again soon.
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There are some concepts in role-playing games that are too good to let go of. Most of the time, these are broad ones that have become nigh-universal, like hit points or magical healing. But sometimes they become more specific, being a single character class with iconic abilities. Case in point is the warlock class, from the Third Edition of the world’s most popular fantasy RPG. While it’s technically closed content, and so can’t be reprinted, the class is popular enough that it can be recreated under the existing rules.
Which brings us to The Invoker, from Little Red Goblin Games. This thirty-page PDF presents us with their take on bringing the warlock into your Pathfinder game. Let’s see how it works out.
From a technical perspective, the product does alright, but there’s room for improvement. The PDF is set on a grayish-tan background, with slight whorls on alternating sides acting as page borders. There is a hyperlinked table of contents, which is a good thing, but the bookmarks look like they were set as placeholders that were forgotten. Copy and paste is thankfully enabled.
The artwork for the book subscribes to the “less is more” theory. There are, in total, maybe a half-dozen interior illustrations; however, these are of a surprisingly high quality, being not only in full color, but having a stylistic “weight” to them that draws attention, whether the image is an invoker gathering red energy in a fist, or a simple goblet. Hat’s off to interior art guy Carl Potter!
The invoker class itself is presented in the stylistic manner of a typical Pathfinder base class. We’re given the requisite material on their role and alignment before moving into the crunch (though their starting gold is missing, to which I say boo). The class itself is quite solid, being a medium BAB, d8 Hit Die class with one good save and fairly restricted weapon and armor proficiencies.
I need to mention right away that the invoker loses fair amount of class abilities, overall, compared to the warlock. It’s true the invoker gets more of the warlock’s invocations thanks to this class separating blast abilities from incantations, plus the invoker has pacts that it makes, but overall the original warlock does seem slightly more versatile – the invoker can’t detect magic, gets no bonus to Use Magic Device, and can’t creature magic items on their own. The class feels, unto itself, more stripped-down – take from that what you will.
The invoker’s main weapon is their mystic blast, which to those of you who are familiar with the original warlock class will recognize this right away. It has all of the hallmarks of the classic – a ranged touch attack out to 60 feet, untyped damage that goes up by one damage die per two levels. No biggie there, though I frowned at noticing the lack of an ability tag here (e.g. Ex, Sp, or Su), something that was a recurring theme throughout the book. Smart GMs will know that this should be a spell-like ability equal to one-half the invoker’s level (minimum 1, maximum 9).
Helpfully, this class separates out the ability to alter the mystic blast from other abilities that mimic spells, something the original warlock made players choose between. At every fourth level you can choose from either “blast traits” or “blast forms” that modify their mystic blast. These two categories are separate, something which I think wasn’t really necessary, since the distinction between the two types of alterations doesn’t seem to serve much purpose; what bothered me more was that the abilities listed for each seemed to be in no particular order, alphabetical or otherwise (and you can forget about any sort of summary table here).
Most of the classic alterations were here though, such as a flaming blast that can set creatures on fire, one that sickens for a round, etc. I was a bit leery of some of the new, more powerful additions, such as the ability to have your blast do 1d2 Constitution damage (that stacks with itself!). Admittedly, most of these do say that you need to be able to use X-level of incantations (more on those in a minute) to select, but even at the upper levels that’s just asking for abuse (or more construct and undead enemies).
After this, the book takes a sharp turn into more original territory as it presents four different “pacts” that each invoker chooses when the character is created. Much like wizard schools or sorcerer bloodlines (though these have an alignment prerequisite, not inappropriately), these modify your initial class skills while also letting you have your blasts deal a certain type of energy damage (or be typeless, your choice), and provide a small bonus to the blast damage (e.g. -2 to Will saves…presumably for that round only).
The biggest addition these pacts bring to the table is that each has a list of boons and taboos that they bring to the table, with the invoker picking one of each. It’s here that I was most impressed with The Invoker, because these offer some very colorful and inspired material to choose from. If you’re a fey pact invoker, you can give up a cherished memory to apply a metamagic feat to one use of an incantation. Or perhaps you’ll want to be able to call upon a “fairy godmother” (the sort of creature this is is further described) when in need of aid. But you have to pick from taboos like not being able to lie when asked a question thrice, or not accepting a gift without providing equal compensation. It’s worth noting that not all of the taboos are things you have a choice about (e.g. cold iron weapons deal an additional 2d6 to you), but there is a discussion of what happens if you break a taboo. Oh, and lest I forget, each pact offers a hefty end-cap power at 20th level.
My biggest complaint about this section was that there were only four taboos here – demon, devil, fey, and star (the last one of which is Lovecraftian in theme). Hopefully we’ll quickly see some supplementary pacts released, because these are far too few for the book’s highlight feature.
A quick half-dozen or so feats are presented (with one letting a non-warlock earn a boon and a taboo, in what I think was the best feat of them all), before we move onto the incantations.
This section is by far the longest of the book, taking up roughly forty percent of its total page count. Incantations (though I wish they’d gone with a different name since we sort of still have rules for “incantations” – something like “exhortations” would have been better) are spell-like abilities (albeit with verbal and somatic components, and in heavier armors they have a chance of failure) that invokers can learn as they level up. They never get more than eleven of these altogether, and they’re divided into four levels a la spell levels, but they can use them at will.
About fifty incantations are presented altogether, and I was surprised at how good a job was done presenting these as all being some sort of “corrupted” form of magic – some of them require bloodletting (a sidebar describes it in more detail, but it never takes more than one point of damage), for example. Many if not most are based on existing spells with twisted descriptions, like the Borrowed Eyes, Stolen Hands incantation, which allows for scrying (as per the spell) on a creature if you have some possession or body part of theirs, which is lost as part of the casting…but you can implant a suggestion (also as per the spell) into them when you scry on them. It’s like that, all the way through.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that a read-through of this book showed some places where the editing fell down. The Fey Spit boon, for example, cuts off at the end of page eleven and doesn’t conclude. Likewise, the star pact end-cap boon seems to contain the text of what I’m guessing was a (slightly overpowered) feat right after the text for the boon ends.
The worst offender though was the listing for the incantations themselves, which (beyond the occasional issue with text being bold or not bold in the wrong places) listed the “school” of each incantation as simply being “incantation.” This was grating because listing a spell school, along with sub-school and descriptor, govern a lot of how spells are utilized in regards to creatures. Presumably, where these incantations referred to existing spells, you use the existing spell’s information, but that’s needless page-flipping. The Borrowed Eyes, Stolen Hands incantation, for example, should have listed that it was divination and enchantment with the scrying and mind-affecting descriptors. That would have helped a lot for quickly and easily adjudicating some of their effects.
Also, and I can’t hold this against the book itself, there were no expanded class options. By that I mean, I keenly felt the absence of things like new favored class abilities and class archetypes. This isn’t a repudation of the invoker itself; rather, the base idea is well done enough that it cries out for more options. With any luck, we’ll soon have a follow-up supplement that adds both these, some new pacts, and hopefully more.
Overall though, these issues were bothersome but never came close to being deal-breakers. As it is, they’re the primary reason I’m giving this book four instead of five stars, because other than those this did a great job at bringing the warlock into Pathfinder. The Invoker brings all of the good parts of the warlock into your game, while also smoothing over some rough spots (remember how the warlock’s eldritch blast damage dice progression got wonky at higher levels?) and presenting some great new options in the form of pacts. True, the loss of some of the warlock’s signature class abilities does weaken the invoker somewhat, but considering what it gains in return this isn’t a terrible loss. If you want a class like the warlock, but with more options and no Pathfinder conversion necessary, invoke The Invoker at your game table.
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There’s a careful balance that needs to be walked when making RPG sourcebooks that build on earlier sourcebooks. If your book requires the use of too many previous books, you severely limit its potential audience. If it tries to shy away from utilizing previous books too much, then it can end up reinventing the wheel in an effort to be self-contained; even reprinting earlier material is fraught with peril, as you can end up irking readers who feel like they’ve paid for the same material twice.
There’s ultimately no right answer to this particular conundrum, and it’s ultimately a hard line to walk no matter how you choose to walk it. That was the thought I had in mind as I read through Fursona IV: Fur of the Yokai from Skortched Urf’ Studios.
Fursona IV is (self-evidently) a supplement for the Fursona sourcebook on anthropomorphic character creation. Despite what the numerical suffix suggests, it is not necessary to own Fursona II or III to use this supplement; though Fursona II does get a few references for some of the new racial orders’ favored traits, that’s the extent of the references to the previous two books.
Fursona IV is fairly forthright in stating that its goal of bringing material from the Races of the Tatakama sourcebook into the Fursona system of character creation. I should note that I haven’t read the latter sourcebook, but it does seem to bring a fair amount of material over. The book does reference some material from Black Tokyo, but fairly obliquely, and it is possible to use this book with Fursona without Black Tokyo, though some places will need to be glossed over.
The book opens with a quick suggestion on mechanical alterations to make if you want the characters generated with this book to be more spiritual creatures than just funny animal-people, before it moves onto several new racial orders based on races from Races of the Tatakama. Three (the daughters of kirin, the kitsune, and the tanuki) are given before a further seven new orders, based on Japanese folklore (though the “slime” order seemed inspired from contemporary video games and art books).
After a quick examining of how these seven new racial types fit into the Tatakama’s feudal-Japan-esque society, we’re taken to new racial traits, first the minor ones (about twenty) and then the major (about ten). Perhaps surprisingly for a Black Tokyo product, these aren’t all explicitly sexual or otherwise perverse in nature…though make no mistake, a fair number of them still are.
It’s also here where I feel that I need to restate the ubiquitous caveat about Chris Field’s works – you need to keep an eye on the power level of what’s written here. While most of what’s here isn’t dramatically out of line, there are some things that are more powerful than I know I’d be comfortable with at my game (and, for some of the disadvantages, more crippling). Now, this isn’t necessarily a terrible thing, as I think “balance” is more about how the GM and players conduct themselves than about game rules…but it remains true that some of these issues can be swingy, at the very least (though no less interesting for it). The Masterful Performer major trait, for example, lets you once per day make a d20 roll when making a Perform check – on a 15 or better, roll a d100; if you get more than a 15 on that, that’s your Perform check result! By the book, that’s overpowered, but as for your home game…maybe.
Following the traits is a section on converted feats from Races of the Tatakama into racial Fursona racial traits. Now this I just flat-out didn’t like. Why? Because the author lists the conversion material only, and not the game effect of the feat in question, making this section fairly useless unless you also have Races of the Tatakama. You know how many points the Blood Breeds Monsters trait costs, what orders treat it as a favored trait, and have a quick description of what it does, but not the actual game mechanics. If you’re going to reprint these here, then you should reprint enough to make them useful on their own.
About a dozen disadvantages end the book, and what I said about the traits applies here. For example, a holy-inscribed boulder can become impassible to your characters for a half-mile in every direction. Is that crippling or an opportunity for more role-playing a solution than roll-playing? I think that this is another area where it depends on the group.
Ultimately, Fursona IV is perhaps best judged on how well it achieved the goals it set for itself. As a sourcebook designed to allow for more specific options for flavoring your Fursona characters with a mythological-Japanese theme, including the erotica therein, this book handles itself fairly well. Of course, you’ll need to keep a close eye on the options you want to allow, and be prepared to adjudicate for builds that are stronger, or weaker, than you were expecting. But overall, it does exactly what it sets out to do, no more and no less.
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Ever feel like every day is another challenge to be overcome? Not in that “it’s a new adventure today!” feeling, but more of a “what awful thing is going to happen today?” sorta way. I imagine that PCs must feel that way a lot, and if so then the endless parade of monsters probably has quite a bit to do with it. Sometimes it must seem like there’s a new monster every day. Speaking of which…
Creature Monthly is the aptly-named monthly compendium of creatures from the Creature Daily website, which delivers a new monster for your Pathfinder game every weekday. This first compilation presents the monsters for April, 2012. Let’s flip through the pages and see what creatures lie in store.
This product comes with two different PDF files, one called April12CDweb and another called April12CDpdf. I’m not sure what the technical difference between the two is, but there’s clearly some sort of difference, because my computer can view the former file smoothly, but the latter one has persistent viewing problems. To be more specific, whenever I try to look through the “April12CDpdf” file, my Acrobat Reader X (on Windows XP Home, if that helps) informs me that it’s having a problem viewing the file (error code 40), and refuses to display the artwork – the text comes through just fine, it’s only the artwork that refuses to display.
Of course, it’s something of a moot point, though a disturbing one, as the April12CDweb file displays just fine. From what I can make out, the two files are meant to be identical in terms of their visual presentation, so there’s no loss of content for the error. Hence, the rest of this review will deal exclusively with what’s in the “…web” file.
The April ’12 Creature Monthly is a forty-seven page PDF that contains exactly twenty monsters, something that always seemed slightly off to me, as there were twenty-one weekdays in April. I know that one missing monster is a small thing, but I can’t help but wonder what happened to the twenty-first creature.
Unfortunately, the book irked me from the get-go, as it lacked the ease-of-navigation tools I’ve come to expect both for PDF files and for bestiaries. To be clear, the book does have a table of contents, listing each monster alphabetically by name. That’s it. No hyperlinks in the table of contents, no bookmarks, no index of monsters by CR or creature type or even terrain. The only way to get an overview of what’s here is to read through the entire book and use the table of contents as a refresher. Hopefully future months will be more forthcoming with the GM aids.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the artwork here, however. Each monster has a full color illustration, and the quality for the picture if exceptionally high. In each case the picture fairly leaps off the page, and will definitely wow your players. Given that the book it set on a light grey background, with borders of darker grey and slight whorl patterns on them, the presentation element of the book is strong. It’s so strong, however, that the lack of a printer-friendly version is notable in its absence. Likewise, size-specific counters to represent the creatures on the battlemat aren’t to be found either.
But after all of these technical issues, what about the monsters themselves, you ask?
The twenty monsters to be found here run a range of CRs, from ½ to 16, and surprisingly there’s an underlying theme to the monsters here – the majority of them are from a cold environment. Now, there are plenty of monsters for whom that’s not so, but a significant number of them are monsters with a wintery theme.
I should mention that most of these monsters could have stood to go a few more rounds of editing. In reading over what’s here, I found creatures with typographical errors (e.g. an opening parenthesis one space too soon for the Blood Shadow’s Ability Focus feat), stylistic errors (the storm angel is a Chaotic Neutral creature with the angel subtype, for instance, or how the Storm Wraith has the electricity subtype…which doesn’t exist), and errors in stat blocks (e.g. the Storm Wraith’s AC bonuses are +1 dodge, +4 deflection, and +7 Dex, giving it an AC of…24? What?). Little errors like these peppered the vast majority of the monsters here, and that’s just on a casual inspection.
Overall, this is a monster book with good intentions but flawed execution. The monsters here are, for the most part, very good in terms of their underlying idea, and in how they want to stat those ideas up. It’s a host of technical problems, from the PDF format to the stat blocks themselves that are holding the book back. Hopefully, these will be a learning experience for the publisher, and next month’s creatures will be easier to use to terrify your players.
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In a role-playing game like Hot Chicks, where sex and violence sit side-by-side (and are oftentimes the same thing), the use of tentacle adversaries was most likely inevitable. However, that doesn’t make them any less compelling, or disturbing, as antagonists. Of course, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t ways to make them MORE disturbing as well. Which brings us to their set-piece Tentacle Madness.
I call this a “set piece” because this product sits halfway between being a supplement and an adventure. While it thoroughly describes a single location and its inhabitants, it’s also quite clearly meant to be an adventure locale, which your heroes can invade to beat the bad guys and get some glory. Tentacle Madness gives you the tools you need to thoroughly build up what’s here so that your PCs can tear it down.
The book is fairly substantial at being a forty-two page PDF. The book has copy-and-past enabled, and comes with full (albeit non-nested) bookmarks. Of course, it hits the regular high bar for Dakkar Unlimited products, having almost all of its interior art be full-color CG images, alongside the odd black-and-white line-scale art. There’s no printer-friendly version, which is something of a loss not because you’d likely want a version without the pictures (after all, this is a game called “Hot Chicks”), but rather because this is likely to put at least a moderate strain on your printer as it is.
Tentacle Madness sets itself up as something out of a horror movie (albeit one of the porny ones). We’re introduced to the Sunny Rest Mental Care Facility through a combination of an in-character narrative revolving around a new inmate named Trishia, and metagame prose directed at the Game Master (helpfully, the in-character material is in italics while the metagame text is in a normal font). The book has no chapters per se, instead being divided into various sections by a series of headers.
Ostensibly a sanitarium, we’re quickly shown that Sunny Rest is a “normal” mental health care facility only insofar as outside appearances are concerned. The veneer quickly falls away as the book progresses – the only “treatment” that patients receive at Sunny Rest is a combination of strange drugs being injected into them and being manually masturbated to orgasm a large number of times a day. If right now you’re rolling your eyes or snickering that that doesn’t sound so bad, the book does a good job of making it clear that this is rape, and not something the inmates enjoy.
The situation grows steadily more horrifying from there. Slowly, we’re introduced to how the nurses there aren’t so much health care workers as they are tentacle monsters, maintaining their (and the facility’s) normal appearances with powerful illusions. Likewise, the drugs and forced sex aren’t just their idea of a good time – they all serve to prepare their victims for their “final procedure,” after which time they’re allowed to leave the facility. Of course, this last treatment presents the full reason why this book has “madness” in its title.
Roughly a third of the book is character sheets for the various people at Sunny Rest, including the so-called staff as well as poor Tricia. Full maps are given, though there are no room-by-room descriptions beyond a general overview of the facility’s defenses (e.g. how tough the walls are, the locks on the windows, etc. Adventure seeds that could get your PCs involved are provided. And of course, the book makes sure to end with a full-page picture of the “staff” in their human guises, completely naked (unlike the picture on the RPGNow storefront, there are no tentacles obscuring the naughty bits) – fan service at its finest.
If there’s a flaw in Tentacle Madness, it’s that it isn’t quite sure what sort of book it wants to be, straddling the line awkwardly between being, as mentioned before, a supplement and an adventure. The back-story, for example, is interesting, but there’s virtually no way to present it to the PCs (though the manner of showing how the threat extends beyond Sunny Rest is very artfully handled). Similarly, the abbreviated description of the actual rooms of the facility (and standard adventure tropes like boxed read-aloud text) make this less than an actual adventure, per se.
Ultimately, what’s here will largely depend on the strength of an individual GM’s presentation. The most obvious way to go about this is to have the PCs be inmates here, but that’s seriously stacking the deck against them, considering how much of a disadvantage the inmates are kept at. Still, these aren’t problems that an experienced GM can’t overcome; it’s just going to take some deftness. Otherwise, your PCs will have their work cut out for them in overcoming the Tentacle Madness.
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It’s difficult to say just what the draw is of playing evil characters. There’s an ineffable quality to being the bad guy, a sense that, if evil is something that tempts people to fall, then those who have fallen have no further moral failings that can be used against them. All that’s left is to make use of the certitude that comes from damnation and bring ruin to the champions of light. It’s in that spirit that we look at the third adventure in the Way of the Wicked adventure path: Tears of the Blessed.
Tears of the Blessed comes as two PDF files – the main file and a printer-friendly version thereof. The latter’s differences from the main file being that it removes the page backgrounds as well as the coloration from the page borders. Unfortunately, that’s not enough for me to give this particular area a pass, as it retains the full color interior illustrations (and even the page borders are kept in line-scale). True printer-friendly material removes all of the interior artwork, even though that means doing the layout again.
That said, the main file presents itself quite well. Bookmarks are present at each major section of the book, though save for one part there were no nested sub-section bookmarks (though the last bookmark took me to the front of the book). Copy and paste was fully enabled, which is always good. I do have to give props to Michael Clarke for keeping the high quality of the art coming. All of the pieces here are full-color, and while I wouldn’t put this at the highest tier of RPG art, what’s here is damn good (devil pun!).
I’m also going to cover up-front that there were some errors in this book. Nothing was major, but small problems crept in. I noticed several typos, several of which a quick spell-check could have caught. Likewise, the odd stat block error is present also, though never so much as to make a creature unusable (no aasimar, for example, has the humanoid type).
Tears of the Blessed follows hot on the heels of the previous adventure, Call Forth Darkness. It’s in this adventure, ironically enough, that we get stats for the magical disease which was the prize of the prior installment in the adventure path. Following achieving this, the PCs are immediately whisked off to the port city of Ghastenhall, settling in for a month to cool their heels before getting started on their next assignment…to raise an army and assault the faith of Mitra’s holiest temple!
I initially had mixed feelings about this section of the adventure, as it seemed like something of a carbon copy of how the previous adventure progressed. As in Call Forth Darkness, the first part of the adventure is a fairly short presentation on the town that the PCs are setting up in before going off and performing their real assignment. However, I quickly remembered that, although this portion of the adventure is short and somewhat underdeveloped, it’s still promising in what it offers, though as with Farholde this is because the gazetteer at the end really helps to make the town come alive.
Part of the reason why Ghastenhall feels so short is that its presented largely as potential adventuring opportunities, which make it feel almost like a series of side-quests waiting to happen – depending on how you present them, and how much your PCs invest in the town, there can be a lot to do here, or it can be quickly bypassed.
The second “act” of the adventure is concerned with the actual formation of the army of evil. As with the section on Ghastenhall, this is one core scenario around which more can be done if the PCs want to go out of their way. After an initial meeting with Sakkarot Fire-Axe in which he lends your PCs a few hundred bugbears to command, there are also several other avenues to explore. Most of these are to find new individuals to fight by the PCs’ sides, but a few do present possibilities for enlarging their overall force. Helpfully, the author does make mention of the PCs existing forces (e.g. Grumblejack the ogre, from the first adventure, or their custom-built evil organization from the second) and how they can play into the overall force.
This section also includes some very cogent advice on what to do if the PCs start to balk at being ordered around. This is wise, as by this point the PCs will likely start to chafe at having to do someone else’s bidding. Of course, this ultimately comes down to various ways to snap them back into line, but it’s good that the author anticipated something like this.
The third act of the book is the initial assault on the valley of Mitra’s holiest temple. This part of the book was interesting for the various tactical possibilities it presents the PCs – up until now, the adventures have lacked a certain degree of freedom in what the PCs could do; what latitude they had was presented in terms of operational discretion…that’s the case here, but the amount of discretion has grown quite a bit.
The Vale of Valtaerna is the valley in which Mitra’s holiest temple is guarded. This is no building constructed in a crevasse either. The entrance to the valley has a watch-tower built into it, and down in the valley is a lakeside small town, a mountain-temple, and finally the cathedral itself. The PCs attack is set to take place at the beginning of winter, when deep snows cut the valley off from the outside world for three months. For those three months, when communication is cut off and reinforcements are near-impossible, the PCs have to conquer the valley and slaughter every single living thing there.
That’s where the operational freedom comes in. This section gives a detailed overview of the watchtower itself, and follows it up with the ensuing battle as the PCs’ army fights its way past various defensive points to finally conquer the defenders. Needless to say, there are various things that the PCs can do in their initial assault what will greatly affect how the initial siege goes, which in turn affects the flow of the rest of the battle.
The author says that this section should keep up the pressure on the PCs, as the entire battle takes place in one night. That means that the PCs need to conquer the watchtower and then fight their way through encounter after encounter. Forget about the fifteen-minute adventuring day here! Be prepared to go through over a half-dozen encounters, and be warned that you can’t just send your army in for these – the battle takes the format of specific encounters that the PCs need to face in the midst of the chaos of battle. Various actions allow the PCs to acquire or lose Victory Points (making a return from the first adventure), with their point total determining the end result of the battle.
With the defenders crushed and the small town now firmly in their grasp, the book’s fourth act deals with everything else in the valley, save for the cathedral. It’s here that the book takes a decidedly darker turn as you immediately need to deal with what to do with the survivors…the elderly, the women, and the children (remember, your assignment is to kill everything). This part is something of a delicate balancing act, as the bugbear commanders have some suggestions about what to do with the prisoners (all of which are awful). In accordance with the advice in the first adventure, this book assumes that one of the bugbears commanders “deals” with the survivors, though your group can step in (for better or for worse) if they wish.
This section allows for three months of time in which to root out the remaining holy areas, and it’s important to note that the book doesn’t presume that it’s entirely quiet during that time. There is one event that does happen here, but after the initial scenes of setting up and dealing with the prisoners, it’s the only one. I do wish that the book had seen fit to give us further events.
The major parts of act four, however, deal with the mountain temple, and the garden in front of the cathedral. These are comparatively short encounters, having about ten areas between them both. They’re still fairly challenging, and aren’t optional (nor can you send your army to these places, as they require competence) – to permanently extinguish Mitra’s light, you must destroy the heart of each holy locale.
With the first two down, it’s the cathedral that holds the last of the religion’s heart. It should be noted that there have been plenty of good-aligned monsters in the adventure prior to this. Lammasus, blink dogs, kirin, all the monsters from the bestiaries that you never usually get to fight. The big one, however, is celestials. There are plenty of celestials throughout the adventure, and that doesn’t change here. Once the PCs manage to overcome the potent holy defenses and slay the cathedral’s final defenders, they can extinguish the central pillar of Mitra’s religion…just in time for the plague they received from the previous adventure to hit the nation’s populace hard.
Following the adventure, the book presents a gazetteer of Ghastenhall. I honestly expected to be bored by this, but was pleasantly surprised by just how alive the city felt. A port town, Ghastenhall is naturally not quite the bastion of righteousness that you’d expect for a country that has a single, Lawful Good religion. Moreover, the city’s history and colorful neighborhoods give it a distinctive quality that is not only likely to fire your creativity for what can be done here, but presents itself perfectly for your evil PCs as well.
The last section of the book gives us an long-overdue overview of your enemy religion: that of Mitra, the Lord of Light. This section surprised me, as I was expecting something more akin to Paizo’s style of deity write-ups; that wasn’t this. First, Mitra is a triune deity, having three simultaneous aspects – this gives him three deity entries, which presents an interesting set of options for those who worship him.
This section also doesn’t deal much with Mitra as an individual. There’s nothing here about what Mitra’s divine exploits, or how he feels about other gods. Instead, the section largely discusses his religion, specifically as it appears in Talingarde (since Mitra has no universal church, something I found odd for a primarily Lawful deity). There was some important information here, such as how spellcasters in Talingarde are comparatively rare – the head of the church, for example, can’t cast divine spells. This is an inversion of the usual assumptions in a Pathfinder game, and is likely something a GM should know when setting the stage for the beginning of this adventure path.
Overall, Tears of the Blessed represents a turning point in the Way of the Wicked. While before, the PCs were operating in secrecy just to survive, and having to defend themselves against those who’d do them harm, here they get to be the ones doing harm to others. In this book, the PCs take the offensive against the light, and get to snuff out the heart of it. There are some problems with the finer points of the product, but these are easily dealt with, and the overall adventure is one which will likely be extremely satisfying to your players. Never has causing so much sorrow been so much fun as it is in Tears of the Blessed.
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